


Tidal

by Sidara



Category: Weiß Kreuz
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 20:36:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/815784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sidara/pseuds/Sidara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“There’s a hole in the organization that needs to be filled. We will fill it, Schuldig.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tidal

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2010 and transferred from my journal to AO3 unedited and unbeta'd for archival purposes. I no longer write in this fandom.

It would be weeks before Schuldig got the taste of saltwater out of his mouth. Or the sand. Spitting out a mouthful of harsh ocean water and tiny hard grains, Schuldig dragged himself further up the beach and sprawled on his back. Blinking dully up at the bright sky, he ran a hand over his face, wiping water and blood out of his eyes.

_Roll call,_ he sent across the mental links that bound him to his teammates. _I feel like I’m a fucking teacher back at Rosenkreuz. Roll call, people. Now._

_You’re forgetting that I saved your life,_ Nagi said. His mental voice sounded thin and thready, but the telekinetic was alive.

_Thank you,_ Schuldig said acidly. _You’ll never hear those words from me again. Crawford? Farfarello?_

_Even almost dying you never shut up,_ Crawford replied calmly. _Why am I not surprised?_

Schuldig only half-heard Farfarello’s quiet murmured response as he focused on Crawford’s thoughts. _Where are you?_

_Not on the beach._

Of course Crawford would be the first one of them out of this fucking mess. Schuldig pushed himself to a sitting position and took stock of the area around him. His white suit was a mess, stained beyond repair. Far down the beach he could just make out a slim form walking his way. A brief touch across that mind told him it was Nagi. Tilting his head back, Schuldig followed the feel of Crawford’s mind to the cliff behind him.

There were wooden stairs leading to the road above and the crumbled mess of destruction they had perpetuated. Crawford stood on the first step, leaning tiredly against the wooden railing. Despite the distance, Schuldig couldn’t see any hint of red on the other man’s white suit that would indicate blood. But he was standing, and after everything that had happened, that was all Schuldig could ask for.

With a grunt, Schuldig shoved himself to his feet, stumbling across the sand to where Crawford stood. Schuldig dragged his feet through the sand, fingers plucking at soaked clothes that stuck uncomfortably to his skin. The ocean salt was drying out his mouth. He could feel bruises forming without even needing to look.

“So what now, fearless leader?” Schuldig asked as he climbed a few stairs and leaned his weight against a different post. Glancing down the beach, he could see that Nagi was almost to them and that Farfarello wasn’t that far behind the teenager.

Crawford had lost his glasses in the fight, the fall, or the ocean. Schuldig wasn’t sure which, but it was strange to see the other man look at him without the frames on his face. The silence from the other man was familiar, if annoying.

“You know I hate talking to myself. You want to join in any time, feel free.”

Crawford rolled his eyes, a sure sign of his exhaustion. It was almost impossible to get a reaction out of the precog and Schuldig knew he was the only one lucky enough to have achieved that. When he was younger, he used to gloat. Now he was old enough to know what it took for Crawford to maintain his control. Far more than it took for Schuldig to keep his mind together.

Thoughts were relatively easy to block out when a telepath had anchors, and Schuldig had three of them. Crawford didn’t have the ability to ignore the world at will.

Nagi finally reached the wooden stairs, the telekinetic surprisingly dry after their fall into the ocean. He reached out and rested one hand against a wooden post, breathing deeply. A faint bit of crimson was smeared beneath his nose, but Schuldig wasn’t worried. Nagi’s mind was tight, but stable. He would live.

Schuldig eyed him irritably. “You couldn’t have made sure the rest of us stayed dry?”

Nagi shrugged one thin shoulder. “Be happy I caught you at all.”

“He finally gets a chance to act like an adult and it makes him pissy.” Schuldig raised a hand to his eyes, shielding them from the bright sunlight. Farfarello was coming up the beach by way of the water’s edge, more interested in the tide than his teammates. “Go play fetch, Nagi.”

Nagi’s eyes narrowed a bit, but he did as ordered, leaving the two oldest members of Schwarz in order to deal with bringing Farfarello to heel. Nagi was the only one who could haul Farfarello around—literally. Telekinesis was better protection than a straight-jacket and a padded room any day of the week. That was all they had out here once upon a time to make sure Farfarello stayed balanced, or at least in one place, but their precautions were gone now.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Schuldig said once Nagi was out of earshot, glancing over at Crawford. “What now?”

“Now?” Crawford tilted his head back and squinted up at the cliff face they still had to traverse. At least there were stairs. “We find ourselves a car.”

Schuldig snorted softly, raking a hand through his wet hair. “Hope there’s more to your plan than a vehicle.”

Crawford didn’t say anything. He simply started up the stairs for high ground. Schuldig scowled at his back, reaching out with strained telepathy for the rest of his team.

_Let’s get the fuck out of here._

*

What was to be the end of the world, some misguided dream by a Council they had spent years carefully undermining, was nothing but rubble. If anyone had survived the collapse of the building, they wouldn’t survive being buried alive. Schuldig couldn’t sense any members of Weiss in the broken mess, but Schwarz had no more use for the assassins. He could care less if they were alive or dead.

The four members of Schwarz took a few seconds to study their handiwork proudly before they went in search of a ride. Cars were parked on the side of the road leading away from the destroyed building. Crawford chose an expensive looking Bentley that had to belong to one of the Council members. Nagi telekinetically unlocked the door, but no keys were hidden away inside.

“Schuldig’s driving,” Crawford said as he walked around the vehicle to the passenger seat. Farfarello was already climbing into the back with Nagi.

“Just because my misspent youth was more exciting than yours doesn’t mean you have to give me all the hard work,” Schuldig said as he went about hot-wiring the car with the help of one of Farfarello’s knives.

“Drive, Schuldig.”

He did, once the engine was running. Schuldig pointed the vehicle back to civilization, none of them caring that their wet clothes were ruining the leather seats. It took three hours to make it back to Tokyo where the appearance of foreigners wouldn’t stand out so much.

Traffic was terrible closer to the city center and Schuldig’s patience snapped before they reached their destination. No one was surprised. “I’m giving the next person who cuts me off a brain aneurysm.”

“Give it five kilometers,” Crawford said.

It was actually two when someone cut them off again. Schuldig switched lanes and sped up, watching in the rear view mirror as the accident unfolded behind them, his telepathy tingling sharply against his shields.

“You’re losing your touch. That wasn’t five kilometers,” Schuldig said.

“I wasn’t talking about a dead man,” Crawford said. “I was talking about the exit.”

Schuldig focused on the road again. “Whatever.”

They pulled off onto the packed streets of Shinjuku, Schuldig weaving his way to whatever destination Crawford saw. The car skidded to a hard halt in front of a valet sometime later, the Park Hyatt Tokyo Hotel rising high above them in the afternoon sunlight.

“Nice,” Schuldig said, as they got out, everyone’s attention sliding away from the four with a little telepathic nudge. “Let’s go get ourselves a room.”

Telepathy got them through the lobby, dealt with the clerk manning the reservation desk, and ejected the people staying in the Tokyo Suite and the Presidential Suite.

“Dibs on the bathroom,” Schuldig said as he walked into the Presidential Suite, Crawford trailing behind. Nagi and Farfarello had already taken over the Tokyo Suite, contemplating room service, judging by their thoughts.

Crawford didn’t fight him for it.

The Jacuzzi bathtub was worth everything money could buy. Schuldig stripped out of his filthy clothes and filled the bathtub almost to the top with hot water. Only when he was sprawled in the tub, head resting on a rolled up towel pressed against the edge, did he finally give into the exhaustion that was still running through his body.

Schuldig closed his eyes, letting his power settle in his mind behind shields that were too thin. It was going to be a few days more before the stress left his mind. He heard footsteps behind him on the bathroom floor, then a hand slid through his hair, cradling his head. The touch was familiar; so was the mind.

“Don’t drown,” Crawford said.

Schuldig cracked open one blue eye and stared up at the precog through rising steam. “You’ve never seen me die in a bathtub, Brad.”

Crawford’s only answer to that was a slight smile. Schuldig flicked water up at the other man’s face. “Fucking liar. Go take a shower. I’m not sharing the tub.”

“I ordered us new clothes.”

“They better not be ugly.”

Crawford ignored that demand and headed for the shower. Schuldig closed his eyes and just sat there, in hot water, with bruises rising in scattered purple splotches across his pale skin. He was lucky that none of his bones were broken. He really did owe Nagi for that, but Schuldig would rather die than admit that.

_You gonna share what you saw?_ he sent at Crawford. 

_In due time._

Schuldig snorted his opinion on that and got comfortable.

Room service brought their clothes thirty minutes later. By then, Crawford was out of the shower, even if Schuldig wasn’t out of the tub. Eventually, Schuldig wrapped a towel around his waist and padded out of the bathroom, dripping cool water on the plush white carpet a long thirty minutes after room service had left.

“Mine, mine, and mine.” Schuldig dug through the neat stack of clothes for the ones that were obviously his. “You can keep the suits.”

“You’ll need one in a few days. Tailored,” Crawford said from where he sat at the nearby table with a brand new laptop and glasses.

Schuldig scowled at the suits which were Crawford’s and dropped his clothes back on the bed. “For what?”

“Japan isn’t where we stay. It’s not going to be useful for a while after this.”

“How long?”

“We’ll be back. Eventually.” The older man glanced up, gaze distant, foggy. “Right now we need to prepare to leave.”

Schuldig tilted his head to the side, wet hair sliding over his cheek. “You finally buy our tickets off this island?”

“One-way back to Rosenkreuz.”

“Why?” Schuldig crossed his arms over his chest, mouth thinning. “Why go back there when we can go anywhere in the world?”

“There’s a hole in the organization that needs to be filled. We will fill it, Schuldig.”

“We’ve worked years to get here and now, instead of taking a well-deserved holiday, you want to work.” His mouth twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Asshole.”

Crawford just looked at him, waiting, as he always had over the years. Waiting for Schuldig to figure out everything he already knew. Resentment was too tiring, always had been. Schuldig didn’t have it in him to stay away. Years of careful planning, of endured abuse and calculated murder had finally found them here, in some hotel room in a foreign country, free for the first time since they were children torn from their families.

Schuldig crawled onto Crawford’s lap, the towel falling to the ground. Wrapping his arms around the precog’s neck, he bent his head to kiss the other man, biting down on Crawford’s bottom lip until he tasted blood. Fingers gripped Schuldig’s hips, digging into his skin, scratching red furrows across a bruised canvas of flesh.

_What did you see?_ Schuldig demanded, slipping his tongue past Crawford’s teeth until he could taste him. _Show me what you saw._

Crawford’s shields were solid structures against Schuldig’s mind, impenetrable mental walls that no telepath had ever been able to break through. Schuldig had never needed to try; Crawford always let him in. Here, now, Crawford’s shields shuddered. Split. Allowed Schuldig in like they had the first time when they started down this road.

He saw it in flashes, like Crawford did, the countless possibilities of six billion lives spread across the continents. A change here, a chance there, the ability to fix fate down the path _they_ wanted.

Schuldig smiled against Crawford’s mouth, bright and sharp, and shifted against the precog, never leaving. _Fucker. Why didn’t you say so? Let’s go rule the world._


End file.
